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“Beowolf lives at the Cerberus Kennel with the tactical dogs, so I’m not sure what he’s seen other dogs do and picked up from dog-to-dog mentorship. And beyond hospital visits and court support, I’m honestly not sure what Beowolf’s trained to do. Certainly not tactical stuff.” Nutsbe pointed to the left, so Olivia would know they were rounding the corner.
“Like?”
“He doesn’t fast rope out of helicopters strapped to an operator’s ruck.”
“At two hundred plus pounds?” Olivia looked bemused. “That would be tough.”
“It’s possible Beowolf was in a training group to spot the reflection on a scope. That makes sense to me. Back at the parking lot, he was acting agitated for a while before he grabbed you. I focused up where he had been looking and saw the glint just as he started to pull you to the ground.” Nutsbe thought it was good to keep Olivia talking. In all the years that his team had been pulling victims out of life-or-death situations, he noticed that they always did the worst when they shut down and went silent. Nutsbe was going to encourage conversation.
“And then you jumped on the pile,” she murmured.
“Again, I just met Beowolf, I don’t know his training, but I can tell you that the K9s that go out with my team are all trained to watch the weapon’s finger. As long as the finger is in a safe position, a weapon won’t get a bite. Move the finger into the trigger guard, and the fur missile launches without command and gets that wrist locked down between, say, two hundred pounds of bite pressure, and the attacker cannot flex the finger.”
“From that distance, he could discern that tiny movement of the finger? That seems improbable.”
“I have no idea.”
“And he bit me. No, he didn’t bite,” Olivia corrected. “Dragged me to the ground. It was a strong enough grip—what should I call it?— I had no choice but to move where he wanted me to go. But he didn’t pierce my skin.”
“His breed tackles and traps.”
“That’s one way to describe it. It was unexpected, for sure. I didn’t know what was happening.”
Nutsbe pointed at the SUV painted the Iniquus branded charcoal gray.
Before they reached the vehicle, Nutsbe decided to go ahead and ask the uncomfortable question. “Do you think that could have been Pauley up there?”
Another thing Nutsbe had learned over his years with Iniquus, if you’re asking a survivor about something with a lot of emotion attached, it was best to do it while moving. That way, some of the sparking energy could dissipate.
“It occurred to me, yes,” Olivia said without hesitation. “He has the skills and the motivation. But going back to the arc you drew. I’m not a thousand percent that either you or I were the specific target. I know these irregular wind gusts are confounding. And it makes sense to me that the bullets were landing erratically in the area and not in a sniper’s ‘one-inch box at a hundred yards,’ which is their standard requirement. But that one-inch mastery can only happen when the air current is predictable, and the calculations can be done.”
“True,” Nutsbe acknowledged.
“The Offsed brothers have been threatening my team. They’d have some skills—mmm, I don’t know their skill level. They like to practice shooting with a militia group.”
They arrived at the vehicle, and Nutsbe reached under the running board to extract the magnetic box with the car’s fob. He swiped open his phone app and tapped in the code that would turn the radio waves on, activating the fob’s connectivity. Pressing the button, the vehicle chirruped as the back gate lifted.
Rounding to the back with Beowolf, Nutsbe discovered a dog bed and a blankie ready. “Beowolf, load.” Nutsbe put his hands under Beowolf’s rump to help heft him up. Once Beowolf smelled the beef jerky treats that Automotive had left for him, he scrambled the rest of the way up just fine on his own.
As Nutsbe closed the hatch, Olivia climbed into the passenger side and pulled on her belt.
Nutsbe slid under the steering wheel and adjusted the mirrors before sending Olivia a check-in glance. He pressed the engine button and flicked on his directional light, then waited for a break in traffic to merge and head down the road. Over here, away from the crime scene, everything seemed to be humming along like normal.
“It could have nothing to do with any of us,” Olivia continued where they’d left off. “It could be a random shooter who thought that he’d sit on the roof and take potshots at the federal judges. Something could be moving through the courts that didn’t align with his politics, and he might have just lumped everyone into the same pot. Could have been stochastic terror.”
“He?” Nutsbe looked at her, then flicked on his turn signal.
“Statistically, we’re looking at a white male under forty.”
“And you have something going to the grand jury?”
“Yeah.” She brushed at her skirt. “I can’t talk about that.”
“Would those players land on this list? Are they motivated and capable?”
“They are, yes. Motivated without doubt. Capable? Definitely.” She pulled down the visor to look in the mirror, then fussed with her wind-knotted hair.
Nutsbe didn’t share—couldn’t share—that it might have been he who put Olivia in the crosshairs. Could Russia or Albania have done that? Improbable. It wasn’t their style. Could it have been the FBI? Absolutely. Yeah. Definitely their style.